9. The Hanoi Hilton was a prison built by the French in the 19th century
In the late 19th century the French colonizers in Indochina built a prison in Hanoi which became known locally as Hoa Lo, though the French gave it the name Maison Centrale (Central House). Hoa Lo in Vietnamese refers to a hot stove, and the name came about because of the proliferation of wood and coal stove dealers on the street, also named Hoa Lo, on which the prison was built. The French used the prison to hold, interrogate, often torture, and sometimes execute Vietnamese who opposed the French presence in Indochina and demanded independence. Expanded to a capacity of 600 inmates in 1913, by 1954 more than 2,000 Vietnamese were imprisoned, under increasingly brutal conditions as the Viet Minh fought to expel the French.
Following the defeat and withdrawal of the French in Indochina, the new government in North Vietnam developed the prison into an education center, considering it an example of the people’s heritage under the French. Thus it was available when the Americans began to lose prisoners to the Vietnamese during the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. The first American prisoner to be held in Hoa Lo arrived in 1964, by 1970 most of the prison camps in North Vietnam were consolidated at Hoa Lo, which the Americans sarcastically called the Hanoi Hilton. POWs were tortured and beaten despite North Vietnam being a signatory of the convention outlawing such behavior. The prison was demolished in the 1990s, with a small section remaining as a museum. As of 2015, the Hilton Hotel chain operated two Hilton’s in Hanoi.